The Complete Birdhouse Book: The Easy Guide to Attracting Nesting Birds

by Donald W. Stokes, Lillian Q. Stokes

Copiously illustrated with line drawings and full-color photographs, this large format paperback book contains the essential information that backyard nature enthusiasts want and need—to build and seek out birdhouses, including the right birdhouse for many popular species.

Genres: Nonfiction, Birds

95 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 1990

About the author

Donald W. Stokes and Lillian Q. Stokes are widely recognized as America's foremost authorities on birds and nature. Their books include the bestselling Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America, the Stokes Field Guide to Birds, the Stokes Beginner's Guide to Birds, the Stokes Nature Guides, and the Stokes Backyard Nature Books. They live in New Hampshire and Florida.

Reviews

[Linda J.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book about building particular bird house for special breeds of birds. The Complete Birdhouse Book: The Easy Guide to Attracting Nesting Birds by Donald Stokes, is brilliantly illustrated and loaded with bird information.

Each type of bird had their life patterns, nesting habits, and special features. And if you want to attract the birds that would be in your area, it also gives what kind of bird house to build, including dimensions and placement of house.

I bought this book at the Nature Center to help support the habitat. Never got around to building the house, but certainly enjoyed reading about theses special gifts of God.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book I would use in order to design and build a birdhouse. But, at this point I am trusting Amazon to deliver whatever I want. However, I needed the information in this guide for potential invading species, best location for placement and proper installation. At times, I wish I have more acreage to attract larger birds.

[Sarah Ehinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book if you are looking to enjoy nesting birds on your property. There are not that many plans within the book, but it provides two basic plan sets that you can use and then modify the entrance size.

[Ita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource for building birdhouses. There's a very handy summary sheet in the first section listing birds and recommended dimensions for birdhouses. The text is easy to read, well organized, and contains many useful recommendations.

The book is divided into three sections:

1. Attracting Nesting Birds
General information on nesting birds, attracting them, features constructed birdhouses should have.

2. Constructing Birdhouses
Step by step construction information for building a simple birdhouse. Also contains advanced birdhouse plans.

3. The Birds
This section contains useful, detailed information for 16 types of birds: map of US distribution of the bird; quick summary of breeding period, territory size, nesting materials, etc.; pictures of various species; miscellaneous useful information about each bird type.

This book is an old book, copyrighted 1990, but the pictures have held up amazingly well, probably because they used high quality paper. They're crisp, clear, and don't have a dated look.

All in all an excellent resource for people wanting to attract birds by building birdhouses.